The decreasing availability of petroleum fuels dictates the need for more efficient engines for automobiles, trucks, and ships of private, commercial, and military use. In this regard, gas turbine and adiabatic diesel engines offer potential benefits over spark ignition gasoline engines. These new engines may also handle a wide range of fuels, including non-petroleum derived fuels such as methanol. Current state-of-the-art diesel and turbine engines have their critical hot gas-path parts constructed of metallic alloys. These alloys, however, limit the temperature at which a turbine can be operated, and thus place an upper bound on the (Carnot cycle) efficiency of the engine. Further, the metallic components must be cooled, and the associated cooling system hardware power requirement reduces the available power from the engine. Another problem with the use of alloys is the strategic nature of the raw materials. High performance engine alloys are based on nickel, chrome, and cobalt, for each of which the U.S. import dependency exceeds 75%. The latter two metals, especially, are potential problems inasmuch as their availability is uncertain.
The problem, then, is to develop materials suitable for use in advanced heat engines at temperatures higher than allowed by current alloy limitations. These materials should also have the ability to operate without external coolant systems, and should be composed of non-strategic materials.
Ceramics based on Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 are leading contenders because they have high strength, excellent thermal shock resistance and good oxidation resistance. They can, for example, be plunged into water from above red heat and still have a fracture strength greater than 100,000 psi. These are properties more reminiscent of metals than ceramics, but, unlike metal, Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 ceramics maintain their properties to much higher temperatures. For this reason, Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 -based ceramics are prime candidate materials for advanced heat engines.
Silicon nitride ceramics exhibit other characteristics desired in heat engine materials; they are composed of non-strategic raw materials, able to operate at temperatures higher than superalloys, and do not require cooling. They offer the further advantage of lower density, so that engine specific power can be further increased and specific fuel consumption decreased. The lower density also translates into faster response to power demand, resulting in higher performance engines. These advantages, however, are only attainable in ceramics which can be fabricated into intricate shapes of low porosity. Fabrication of silicon nitride to high density is difficult because of the covalent nature of the bonding and low diffusivity of the material. The most satisfactory way to accomplish densification is through liquid-phase sintering, which requires addition to the Si.sub.3 N.sub.4 of other components.